Clark Ehman (Freshman), Charles Sweeney (Sophomore)

This year, our school’s seniors had a great year in terms of how many students got into phenomenal institutions for postsecondary education such as Carnegie Mellon, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Georgetown, Eastern Michigan, University of Pittsburgh, and many many more. This year isn’t a one off. Previous graduating classes have had similarly great college acceptances. This begs the question, why is Obama so attractive to universities?

Colleges love the IB model that our school uses, so we’re immediately set apart from students of other high schools. Almost every school in America has AP courses available, but very few have IB. Mr. Ehman, the IB Diploma Program coordinator when asked about this said, “Colleges understand the nature of the work that an IB student takes on. For each IB course, there are multiple assessments. Students have to do more than just cram for one exam to be successful in IB.” All Obama Juniors take a research course, which prepares them to write their extended essay. It’s a 4,000-word independent research paper. The IB model doesn’t just focus on producing good students, but also good people. For example, all juniors and seniors also must complete 150 Creativity Activity Service hours. These unique and rigorous attributes further set IB students apart. When a college is looking at your transcript, it definitely makes you stand out. 

It is also the unique mentality that many Obama students have. Senior class president on track to be one of this year’s Valedictorians, Samaree Perkins says,  “All of us have had really big aspirations since freshman year, and some of us even since middle school, that we just knew that we had big plans for the world.” 

It seems that ambition, hard work, and dedication, along with the unique nature and opportunities provided by our school is why many of this year’s graduating class got into some of the best colleges in the country.